Frank Oliver Dupee (April 29, 1877 – August 14, 1956) was a

pitcher In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

. Dupee started one game for the 1901 Chicago White Stockings on August 24. He faced three batters and walked all three before getting pulled. All three came around to score, and Dupee was hung with the loss. As he never pitched again in the majors, he became one of 19 players to retire with an ERA of infinity. Dupee's minor league records are fragmentary, but according to research done by the

Society for American Baseball Research The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is a membership organization dedicated to fostering the research and dissemination of the history and record of baseball primarily through the use of statistics. Established in Cooperstown, New ...

, Dupee had pitched well enough in the 1901 season in the minors (a 10–6 record with two teams in the

New England League The New England League was a mid-level league in American minor league baseball that played intermittently in five of the six New England states (Vermont excepted) between 1886 and 1949. After 1901, it existed in the shadow of two Major League B ...

) to warrant his call-up. However, his inability to throw strikes meant that Dupee was sent back down to the minors in September 1901, and sold to the New York Giants in the off-season. Dupee impressed Giants manager

John McGraw John Joseph McGraw (April 7, 1873 – February 25, 1934) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) player and manager who was for almost thirty years manager of the New York Giants. He was also the third baseman of the pennant-winning 1890 ...

at the Giants 1902 spring training camp, but he injured his arm before the season began and was again sent to the minors. Dupee played as a semi-regular for four different New England League teams in the 1902 season, appearing more often as an outfielder than as a pitcher. Dupee spent a total of 13 seasons in the minors as a pitcher, never getting a shot at the majors again. McGraw later claimed that Dupee was the only pitcher he had ever seen who threw with the same speed as Hall of Famer

Walter Johnson Walter Perry Johnson (November 6, 1887 – December 10, 1946), nicknamed "Barney" and "The Big Train", was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 21-year baseball career in Major League Baseball as a right-ha ...

, universally acknowledged as the fastest pitcher of his era.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dupee, Frank 1877 births 1956 deaths Major League Baseball pitchers Chicago White Sox players Fall River Indians players Haverhill Hustlers players Lawrence Colts players Lowell Tigers players Baseball players from Vermont People from Monkton, Vermont